Tendring Topics…….on Line
Happy Easter to all Blog readers!
This
week is an important one for all of us.
There has been – at last – agreement among politicians on the way in which the press should be regulated following the publication of the Leveson Report. We will have had time to digest the effects
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget, which was presented to Parliament
last Wednesday the day after last week’s blog was published, and it is the
final week of the 2012/2013 Financial Year.
The main force of the government’s austerity programme will begin to be
felt a few days into the following week.
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A depiction of Christ’s Resurrection in
St James C of E Church in Clacton-on-Sea . The risen Christ is asking weeping Mary
Magdalene ‘Why weepest thou? Who seekest
thou?’
It is also ‘Holy Week’ the final week of the season of Lent which comes to a
climax on Good Friday with the remembrance of the rigged trial and cruel
crucifixion of Jesus Christ whom we Christians believe to have been the
incarnation of that true light of God that St John declares in verse 9 of the
first chapter of his Gospel, 'enlightens everyone who comes into the world’. This is sometimes known as the Quaker
Verse because it gives scriptural authority to the Quaker assertion that there
is a divine spark, ‘that of God’,
within every man, woman and child in the world, irrespective of their colour, race or creed.
Fortunately
for all humankind the agony and grief of Good Friday was overcome on that first
Easter Sunday morning by Jesus’ resurrection and his appearance to the weeping Mary
Magdalene. Blinded by her tears she had
imagined that it was the gardener who was sharing her pre-dawn vigil until
Jesus made himself known with those kindly words ‘Why are you weeping? Who are you seeking?’ and with incredulous recognition her sorrow turned
to joy. That
miraculous resurrection gives Christians the assurance that, in the end, good
will triumph over evil. Compassion, love
and forgiveness will ultimately triumph over greed, hatred, selfishness, fear, and
thoughts of vengeance, and the will of God ‘will
be done on Earth as it is in Heaven’.
I
hope to join with others in giving thanks for that assurance on this Easter Sunday
morning.
At
the beginning of this blog I mentioned that, at long last, agreement had been
reached by the political parties about regulation of the press. Perhaps that statement should be qualified. The politicians have indeed agreed, but membership of the group of newspapers to be subject to regulation is voluntary. The editors (or would it be the owners who
make the decision?) of one or two newspapers have reluctantly agreed to join
‘the club’ but others are strongly opposed to it. Unless a clear majority decide to ‘sign on’
the whole elaborate arrangement could surely collapse.
I
was interested in the comments of Ian
Hislop, Editor of Private Eye a
hard-hitting publication that I always enjoy reading, during the course of a
BBC tv news programme on Tuesday 20th May. He pointed out that the press practices that
have caused outrage among both celebrities and members of the general public –
phone hacking, bribing or attempting to bribe the police or public officials,
using recorded material in stolen mobile phones, unwarranted intrusion into the
private concerns of members of the public by means of force or deception, were already
criminal offences. Why was it that they
hadn’t been pursued before by the forces of the law?
I
think it likely that it was for the same reason that Jimmy Savile was allowed
to get away with his activities for so long, and locally and on a much smaller
scale, how Lord Hanningfield’s extravagant expense claims as a member of the
House of Lords and Leader of Essex County Council, didn’t attract official
attention for several years. Those who
knew or suspected wrongdoing had mortgages to pay and families to support. The person they suspected had powerful
friends who clearly had no such suspicions. They may though have had control of
the future of any potential whistle-blower, whose promotion, job and whole
future could be at risk. It would be best not to say a word without absolute,
cast-iron proof. Even then, it might be
wiser to leave it to someone else to blow the whistle.
This brings me
to the question of the ownership and control of our ‘free press’. It is surely wrong for the means
of influencing public opinion and swaying the mind of the electorate to be in
the hands of wealthy individuals. It is
even worse if those individuals are not British – whether they be Russian
oligarchs or American news media millionaires. Such owners of the press wouldn’t dream of
asking their editors and reporters to print anything that is untrue – but those
employees know that their future careers will be enhanced if they select material that supports the newspaper owner’s preferences and
prejudices as being newsworthy, and reject or put on a back page material that opposes them. Meanwhile those owners, or their trusted
lieutenants, seek the acquaintance and friendship of top politicians. They don’t, of course, seek to bribe or bully
them – but they leave them in no doubt about which policies and actions would ensure favourable headlines and news stories.
This
is not something that could happen. It is something that has happened and I believe is still happening. I don’t know the answer but I do know that a
‘free press’ tightly controlled by wealthy individuals isn’t free in any real sense of the word. While I’d hate to see a government controlled
press, I’d hate even more to live under a government controlled by the
machinations of foreign media millionaires.
‘It's all right for some!’
On Wednesday 20th March, most of us
were trying to work out whether we would be better or worse off after George
Osborne’s Budget. Beer drinking motorists
seeking daytime care for their children, who have been deterred from house
purchase by the size of the deposit required, may well be better off – at least
for the time being.
A
few privileged employees of Barclays Bank had no such worries. For them – despite the banking scandals of
the past year – Christmas had come early!
On the same day that Mr Osborne was making his annual Budget Speech,
Barclays were announcing that they were paying a total of £38.5 million in
bonuses to their top employees. At the
top of the hand-out tree was their Head of Investment Banking who was given
shares worth £17.5 million! He may have
had a few personal cash-flow problems – or perhaps he knew something about
Barclays that we don’t – because he promptly cashed the lot.
Barclays
Chief Executive didn’t do quite so well.
He pocketed a mere £5.3 million worth of shares of which he cashed only
half.
It’s
nice to know that these two gentlemen will also be getting a hand-out from a
grateful government next week when the income tax on their take-home pay above
£150,000 will be reduced. Who was it
said, ‘We’re all in this together’?
Talking
about income tax reminds me………
…….that one feature of
the Chancellor’s Budget will benefit me if I’m still around to take advantage
of it in April 2014, when it comes into force.
The first £10,000 of my income will be tax-free. I’d rather that it wasn’t though. I don’t think that those whose income is less
than £10,000 a year should be ‘freed from
the burden of income tax’
Income tax is the
only form of taxation that is levied directly in accordance with our ability to
pay it. VAT and taxes on petrol,
alcohol, the lottery and the like are the same for wealthy and poor alike. Consequently they hit the poor the hardest.
Income tax could be properly graded so that it has the same impact on us all. I’d like to see the same percentage of every
adult’s gross income be their first and
most important tax demand – an ‘annual membership fee’ for the very
considerable privilege of being a British citizen.
Levied
on everyone, from the very wealthiest to those on minimum wage or ‘benefit’, it
would of course mean that a much larger sum was collected from the wealthy than
from the poor. But we would all part
with the same proportion of our income.
No one would starve or be rendered homeless by having to pay it – and I
believe that quite a low percentage of gross income (30 percent perhaps) levied
on every adult without exception would make it possible for the minimum wage
and unemployment and similar benefits to be higher. We would all have a stake in the country’s
prosperity. We would truly, ‘all be in this together’.
An Avenue on the Brooklands Estate taken by a
‘ Guardian’ photographer.
The Guardian newspaper sent a reporter, Ms. Amelia
Gentleman, to Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate on Budget Day to discover how England ’s most
deprived area would be likely to fare under Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget.
In her report Ms Gentleman described the
Brooklands Estate as consisting, ‘of
small houses, some barely bigger than beach huts, packed together along
potholed lanes’. Many of the residents were, ‘entirely dependent on the welfare system which the Chancellor described
as “bloated”. With 51 percent of adults
receiving benefit, the Brooklands Estate acts as a test zone for the impact of
government welfare reform. Residents
here will experience the changes in great numbers as they roll out later this
year. They are already feeling the
effects of tightened eligibility to some benefits…………As well as being named the
most deprived place in England and Wales in 2011, the area was found last year
to have the highest number of young people not in employment or training, with
a third of 16 to 24 year olds claiming jobseeker’s allowance, more than five
times the national average of 6 percent.
Later in her
report she comments that, ‘Brooklands’
population has always been transient but recently officials have noticed a
bigger influx of families from London – possibly as a result of housing benefit
changes in the capital, which are forcing families to search for cheaper
housing elsewhere’. A house price
survey had revealed that Brooklands is one of the easiest areas in the country
to buy a house. Bungalows there are on
sale for around £20,000.
She reported that many
people living in the area , ‘would like
to sign up to Osborne’s vision of an aspiration nation, and become hard-working
home-owning taxpayers’ but that there simply aren’t the jobs in the area to
make it possible for them to fulfil that dream. ‘There are 3,500 unemployed people in the surrounding Tendring District
competing for just 500 jobs currently being advertised’.
Making the most of the Budget!
A economics expert on BBC Breakfast
tv on 21st March pointed out that, thanks to the Budget, if we drank
10,000 pints of beer – we would save £10!
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